Recently, Management World, the economic and social investigation column of second issue in Management World, a state level economic management journal published the paper by Professor Cheng Hong, titled Have Management Promoted the Enterprise’s Labor Productivity? - the Empirical Evidence from China Enterprise Employer – Employee Survey. This is another landmark research result of China Enterprise Employer – Employee Survey (CEES).
Based on CEES data, this paper innovatively introduces “the world management survey scale (WMS)” by professor Bloom from Stanford University, and professor Van Reenen from London School of Economics, which empirically verifies the impact and influence mechanism of management efficiency, the important micro factor on China’s enterprise labor productivity.
Using OLS, propensity score matching regression, instrumental variable method and other identification strategies, this paper finds that management efficiency is an important driving force for the growth of labor productivity of Chinese enterprises at the present stage. On average, the marginal contribution of management efficiency to productivity growth is about 14.2% for its 10% of increase each time. Further analysis shows that compared with developed countries and regions such as the United States and the European Union, the average score of management efficiency in China is only 0.539, which is nearly 20% lower than that of developed countries. Under the premise of full control of other factors, low management efficiency is an important reason for the great downward pressure on labor productivity growth in China at the present stage.
On the basis of this, this paper adopts the measure method of auxiliary regression, and makes an empirical analysis on the influence mechanism of management efficiency on labor productivity of Chinese enterprises. Results show that compared with group enterprises with "low management efficiency", the management group companies with high efficiency perform better in the quality of human capital and physical capital, the quality of the product competitiveness, internal knowledge sharing. The above four factors are important channels for management efficiency to promote labor productivity improvements.
As an important paper to study China's productivity growth, the conclusions of this paper have important policy implications for Chinese enterprises to raise labor productivity. Specifically, this paper proposes the following three policy suggestions. Firstly, the government should fully realize that promoting enterprise management efficiency is vital to enhance China’s enterprise labor productivity and achieve long-term and steady macroeconomic growth. Government is thus suggested to include enterprise management improvement into for the important content of supply side reform. Secondly, the state should design relevant industrial policy system to strengthen policy guidance to enterprises from the policy perspective to stimulate management upgrade. Thirdly, China's enterprises should increase the investment on management efficiency, and make full use of human capital quality development, fixed assets upgrading, product quality improvement and knowledge sharing optimization, effectively give full play to the management efficiency in terms of promoting enterprise labor productivity growth.
Management World is an authoritative publication sponsored and managed by the State Council Development Research Center, which is a comprehensive periodical reflecting China's economic management theory, policy research and management practices. Since its inception in 1985, it has been well received by people from all walks of life at home and abroad, and has been ranked number one in the comprehensive evaluation of national economic management publications. The magazine is accredited by the Department of the National Natural Science Foundation Management as academic journal, the first batch of key journals sponsored by national philosophy and social science fund of National Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Science; one of top 100 social science journals of State General Administration of Press and Publication. It is also the only top management journals selected by China Social Sciences Evaluation Center of China Academy of Social Science, ranking first in Chinese Academy of Social Science Research Evaluation Center (CSSCI) of Nanjing University.